Feb 18, 2012

This year's Mobile World Congress, the world's largest cell-phone trade show, will be the biggest ever, said Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer for the GSMA, the trade group that organized the show.

More than 60,000 people will descend on Barcelona between Feb. 26 and March 2 to check out the latest in mobile technology. Google and Nokia are both taking up more space than they previously did, promising lots of demos from both companies.

Voice-over-LTE will also play a big role at the show, O'Hara said. The next generation of voice calling, VoLTE routes calls over 4G networks to offer better sound quality and more network capacity. Sprint, Verizon, and MetroPCS have all announced plans for VoLTE.

"I think a lot of handsets are announcing support for voice-over-LTE, and you'll see examples of VoLTE activity," O'Hara said.

Connected home devices will make a big showing as well, and "NFC will continue to be a very hot area," O'Hara said.

Rumors are currently swirling about quad-core phones and tablets coming at the show, including aMotorola Intel phone, Asus tablet/phone combo, LG quad-core phone, and several new smartphones from Nokia. We'll round up those rumors in full later this week.

Microsoft is also using MWC as its platform to launch a preview of its next desktop and tablet OS, Windows 8. Launching it at MWC brings Microsoft's play for the tablet market to the fore, O'Hara said.

"I think they're converging the core OS for the desktop and the mobile device together, and I suspect their focus will be on tablets … rather than the desktop," O'Hara said.

Now, About That Transit Strike …

O'Hara said we'll get an update Monday on plans relating to a possible transit strike in Barcelona during the show. The show's CEO, John Hoffman, is in Barcelona right now talking to local officials.

"I think we'll get something worked out," O'Hara said. "We don't want to say too much because we don't want to inflame situations or get involved in the dialogue, but we are on the ground making sure that there's a plan in place."

While the show is scheduled to stay in Barcelona through 2018, a catastrophic strike could imperil that plan, O'Hara said, but the GSMA would rather stay in Barcelona if possible.

Today in the Spanish press, city officials said they would negotiate "up to the last second" to avoid a possible strike; the next meeting between the potential strikers and management is scheduled for Monday. The mayor of Barcelona, meanwhile, has asked for a "high minimum service level" to be set in case of a strike, assuring some subway and bus service.via[pcmag]